I’ve been thinking about freedom.
The idea of freedom is generally pretty important to Americans. We like to talk about how free we are, how we’ve cornered the market on liberty, and how we are fighting, right now, as we speak, for the freedom of others.
Ironic, considering how enslaved we are.
A few days ago I overheard a couple of students talking about their hair, and how unhappy they were with it, and how they needed to get it straightened. Last night, reading a message board, I saw women comparing themselves with other women’s cleaning habits, and berating themselves for being terrible people because they didn’t mop as often as the last person. Every we are judged, often not on our skills, or personality, but on the size of our body, the label on our jeans, or the potential profit we offer our judge. This is not freedom.
Worse yet is the bondage we place upon ourselves; we are never good enough, cool enough, talented enough, or pretty enough to meet the standards that exist in our own mind, standards whose origins we ourselves can’t, or won’t unearth. Who, after all, wants to admit at 25, or 35, or 52 or 70 that he is still haunted and driven by the voice of a long gone critical teacher, or that every day she goes through personal rituals she hates, simply because that’s what her mother told her was done? Who is willing to be the contradictory whisper among all the shouting, the one who admits that she is not as free as everyone seems to think she should be?
I have spent my life in bondage, enslaved to a past I could not control and a future that loomed dark. I have spent my life desperately serving my need to control the world around me. I have been my own marionette, mercilessly yanking my own strings to fulfill some undefinable need, and sinking farther and farther into despair with every pull.
No more.
On April 23, 2007, on the floor of a friend’s apartment, I was set free.
This is my story.
My Improvisational Life 